THE next general election is now less than a year away. The likelihood is that even if General Musharraf is still at the helm, and regardless of whether, and to what extent, the caretaker government and the election commission are constituted in consultation with the opposition, most of our political parties will participate in the exercise. What will they say to the electorate? We cannot be certain, but we can look for probabilities.

Certain deprivations, needs, and aspirations are shared by the people at large. But not necessarily in the same measure: Pakistanis are not a homogeneous people, which means that some issues will have greater salience in certain parts of the country than in others. This will pose a problem for the “national” parties that want to address the whole country.

The MMA has recently further highlighted the issue of Islamisation. It has passed the controversial Hasba bill in the NWFP assembly, which will create a special police force to scrutinise the citizen’s conduct for conformity to Islamic morality. This bill does not have many supporters beyond certain segments of the Pukhtun belt in the NWFP and Balochistan. The MMA opposed the Protection of Women bill, saying that it was repugnant to Islam. They will denounce the ruling party (PML-Q) and others (PPP, MQM) who voted for the bill in parliament. It is likely also that they will demand full implementation of the Sharia in Pakistan.

Islamisation as a policy objective is not likely to have widespread support in Punjab. Unless their temper has changed radically in recent years, the Punjabis, mostly a fun-loving people, have traditionally taken religion in stride. Islamisation will probably be treated as a “non-issue” in Sindh, except urban neighbourhoods where one of the Islamic parties is predominant. It follows that the PPP, MQM, and the regional parties in Sindh will leave this matter alone. The same holds for the various regional parties in Balochistan.

How will the PML-Q, 40 or more of whose members stayed away from the National Assembly when the women’s protection bill was voted, handle the issue of Islamisation? It may be recalled that during Mr Nawaz Sharif’s second term as prime minister the PML got the National Assembly to pass a Sharia bill and a constitutional amendment requiring the government to enforce its injunctions. Many of those who voted for these measures are now assembled in PML-Q. It is hard to say whether, following General Musharraf, they will be content with honouring Islamic principles and values, and omit reference to the Sharia. It is going to be an agonising issue for this party to handle.

Let us now turn to a related issue: that of the present government’s drive against the Taliban, its support for the American military campaign in Afghanistan, and its unquestioning participation in war against terrorism which, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, often tends to become a campaign against Muslims, if not Islam itself. The MMA will have no problem here. Its notables will project the Taliban as devout Muslims who are resisting the non-Muslim western powers’ onslaught against Islam. They will condemn General Musharraf and his regime for joining hands with those who wage war against God’s servants.

This line of reasoning will probably appeal to a substantial number of persons in the country across the board. But it will not, by itself, enable the MMA to win the election. Voters, other than those who are its committed supporters, will want to consider not only the larger package of its commitments and programmes but also its past performance.

The government’s support for America’s anti-Taliban operations in Afghanistan, and the “collateral” damage they cause, will once again be a troublesome issue for the PML-Q. Being the ruling party, with General Musharraf as its patron, it cannot criticise its own policy and actions during the last four years. It cannot praise the Taliban and their doings. It may choose to avoid the subject but its opponents will keep bringing it back into the debate. It cannot be virulent in attacking American foreign policy or its implementation under President George Bush.

But on the larger issue of the American war on terror, it may take the way General Musharraf has periodically opened: it may argue that the United States and other western powers must address the situations that cause terrorism; they must deliver justice to the Palestinians, Kashmiris, and oppressed people elsewhere. They must also leave in peace Muslim countries that do not wish to be the clients of any foreign power (e.g., Iran and Syria). They can, I think, adopt this kind of a stance without seriously alienating the United States.

The PPP, MQM, ANP, the Sindhi and Baloch regional parties will have a relatively easy time with this issue. They will readily dissociate themselves from the Taliban and their agenda. PML-N will probably want to be ambivalent and, like PML-Q, avoid the subject to the extent possible. Mr Nawaz Sharif does not seem to have supporters in the United States Congress or the executive branch. His party will, therefore, feel free to join the Islamic parties in denouncing America’s military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and its allegedly anti-Islamic biases.

The MQM, ANP, and the regional parties may also be critical of American policy, but it is not likely to be one of their major concerns. Ms Benazir Bhutto thinks that she does have supporters in the American government and political circles. Moreover, being a serious contender for power, she may be persuaded, as many Pakistani politicians and observers are, that her aspirations cannot reach fruition without American approval. It is, therefore, likely that the PPP’s comment on American policy will be mostly subdued, but it may join others in demanding redress of Muslim grievances.

There is then the issue of terrorism within Pakistan, mounted by its own homegrown militants. Hardly a day passes without a bomb blast in this or that town. Railroad tracks, power transmission systems, gas pipelines, public buildings and utilities are blown up, and military stations are attacked in Balochistan everyday. PML-Q will say that “miscreants” engage in these subversive activities, that they are fighting the government because they oppose its plans for delivering economic development, education and other amenities to the people, and that the tribal sardars, who also oppose development because they want to keep their tribesmen as captives, are co- sponsoring terrorism in the province.

No other party will accept this interpretation, for there is a lot more to the widespread disaffection in Balochistan. It is agreed at all hands that the province has all along been both neglected and exploited and, as a result, it is the most disadvantaged part of the country. Educated younger people in Balochistan want to have control of their affairs, particularly their resources. They want an end to central control. They, as well as the neighbouring Sindhis, want provincial autonomy.

All political parties in the country applaud the idea of provincial autonomy and, to varying degrees, they will support it in their election campaigns. But note also that the parties that have held power in the past (PPP and PML) have actually been given to centralisation. They have been champions of provincial autonomy only when they ruled in a province while a rival party ruled at the centre.

Considering its large constituency in Sindh, the PPP may now press harder for provincial autonomy. Most of the other parties will probably do the same. But PML-Q will, once again, have rough going with this issue. It will, of course, assert that its government has allocated large sums of money for education, infrastructure, and other development projects in Balochistan, and that it plans to do a lot more along the same lines. But these protestations will not mollify Baloch spokesmen.

It should be noted here that General Musharraf is a centraliser. The same is true of the civil and military bureaucracies. PML-Q cannot, therefore, become a hard-hitting advocate of provincial autonomy. It will have to contend with another problem. It has spoken in favour of provincial autonomy, appointed committees to study this matter and Baloch grievances, received their recommendations, promised legislation to implement them, but actually done nothing. Its opponents will argue that any promises it now makes deserve to be dismissed as mere deceit.

A word should now be said regarding the state of Pakistan’s relations with India. There has been a great deal of talk during the last four years about their normalisation. Declarations of intent and periodic meetings between officials are called a “peace process.” Each side’s terms for normalisation have so far been unacceptable to the other. None of the disputes between them has been settled. General Musharraf’s government has given up the country’s age-old conditions for a Kashmir settlement and declared itself open to suggestions. India has made no substantive response to Pakistan’s overtures. On the other hand, it continues to accuse Pakistan of permitting terrorists to cross into its territory.

Thus, PML-Q will have nothing to show for itself in this area. While professing their desire for peace with India, the other parties will contend that they would have negotiated the issues with that country to Pakistan’s greater advantage. The MMA, PML-N, and possibly Imran Khan’s TI will allege that the present government has “sold Kashmir down the river” and gotten nothing in return. The PPP will probably adopt a milder stance on this issue. The Kashmir dispute, and the matter of relations with India generally, are not likely to be a central concern with the MQM and the regional parties. It remains to be seen, and it is not to be taken for granted, that any of the major opposition parties will do significantly better in negotiating issues with India if by some chance it comes to power.

There are other issues, which the various political parties will want to address as they get ready for the election in 2007, and we will take up some of them next Sunday.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.

NOT a day goes by without the president or the prime minister or the ruling party bosses, Chaudhry Shujaat and Mushahid Hussain, reiterating that the “assemblies will complete their term”.

Some ministers, of course, dutifully chime in to complete the chorus. In every parliamentary system the legislatures have a maximum but no minimum term. So is it in Pakistan’s. The prime minister in his discretion can advise the president to dissolve the National Assembly at any time and so can the chief minister of the province by advising the governor.

Ordinarily, the prime minister uses his discretion to dissolve the assembly before it has completed its term in two situations. One, if he senses danger of losing majority in the House and, secondly, when he sees the prospects of his party faring better at the polls ahead of the full term than at its end. If the Muslim League-Q were realistically to take into account both these factors it should favour calling elections now rather than at the end of 2007 or even a year later as Chaudhry Shujaat keeps suggesting every now and then.

The present assembly by completing its five-year term may create history but the Q League will keep losing ground. Its partners in government also appear too tired and disillusioned to stick together for another year. Time is on the side of the opposition. Looking at the emerging events and party alignments, the chances of the Q League returning to the centre of power, or being even a force in the opposition, appear to be diminishing by the day.

A phenomenon unusual but peculiar to our post Seventeenth amendment parliamentary system is that while all the hullabaloo is about elections to the national and provincial assemblies their importance after the amendment lies not in making or unmaking governments or in enacting laws or answering questions but in being the electoral college for the president. The Q League and its now estranged ally — the MMA — joined forces in 2002 to make possible the election of General Musharraf as president. In the coming contest, political parties and personalities that are closer to Musharraf’s modernist thinking at home and supportive of his international commitments might make the Q League (its natural affinity with the religious parties despite the current estrangement is no secret) irrelevant in the presidential election. Political parties are the mainstay of a genuine parliamentary form of government. In the parliamentary system of the variety that we practice it is the other way round — the parliament sustains the parties. Further, the complexion and behaviour of a party is determined not by its programme but by its leader and his personal connections. The Q League will not be the same party as it is now if its next leader were to be Hamid Nasir Chattha, as rumour has it he will be, or if Gen Musharraf were to distance himself from its leadership, which many speculate he would.

The strategies of the parties and the fortunes of their leaders apart, the national interest (if it at all figures in the power play) demands that elections should be held before political intrigues and maladministration in government combine to make it impossible to hold them. The PPP and the Nawaz Muslim League both have threatened to subvert the polls if their chiefs, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, were to be barred from contesting. Musharraf says they will be.

The chief of the Q League keeps wooing the estranged religious parties (which in turn are falling apart) but confronting the MQM which is a partner in government both at the centre and in Sindh. Compelled to choose between the Q League and the MQM, Musharraf would have no option but to choose the latter for no other party can control urban Sindh for him.

The fact of the matter is that the coalition governments at the centre and in Sindh and Balochistan are intact and stumbling along not because of the political factions forming the coalitions but despite them. The binding force is the president and not the party leaders. The longer it takes to hold elections, the stronger will become the presidential grip on state institutions — beyond the president’s statutory powers.

The point is that the longer the political vacuum and uncertainty, the farther the country will drift from parliamentary traditions and practices. Only the new leaders and forces emerging from the elections will be in a position to curb the powers that the president has assumed beyond those conferred on him by his own amended Constitution. The present grovelling lot, who owe their place in the power structure to him, will continue to feel answerable to him alone and not to parliament or the people.

Political manoeuvres will abate once elections are held — unless they are rigged by the authorities or sabotaged by street agitators. But the damage being caused by poor administration will be lasting and irreversible. Delayed and bungled elections in the past have harmed civil institutions, especially those concerned with law and order and the administration of justice, much more than the flaws in the recruitment and training of civil servants.

Though the elections are a year away most public decisions appear aimed more at victory in the polls than the welfare of the people. The Punjab chief minister has taken in 18 more ministers, advisers and special assistants even though many among those already there had little to do.

The Mirani dam has been in the making for almost two generations. Now, when the displaced people were to get compensation for their submerged homesteads and lands, the widespread suspicion is that a billion and a half rupees sanctioned for them will be used instead to win support for the ruling party.

Residential plots in Islamabad have been given to senior civil servants at a fraction of the market price and 3,400 official houses have been allotted to officials out of turn at the housing minister’s discretion. Previously, such largesse was reserved for a few. The rest were governed by the rule of merit or luck by draw.

The motive behind all such decisions is political. Only early and fair elections can check this rot. In bringing that about if the choice is between chaos and compromise the saner elements both in the government and in the opposition should opt for the latter.